Neighbors' Wives

After six years of law school, police detective John McGrath, called "Mac" by his friends, prepares for his bar exam following work one evening. When Mrs. Ann Rainey, a vivacious neighbor in his apartment building, comes by to borrow an egg from Mac's wife Helen, Mac does not acknowledge Mrs. Rainey's presence, and after she leaves, he orders Helen not to have anything to do with her. As Mrs. Rainey prepares her table for a romantic evening with her lover, ex-boxer Bill Cooper, who lives on the same floor, her radio disturbs Mrs. Myra Lee, another neighbor on the floor. Mrs. Lee tries to get Helen to sign a complaint against Mrs. Rainey, but Helen says that she will do nothing to add to Mrs. Rainey's troubles. While Mrs. Lee gossips on the telephone, a man's hand reaches into her pocketbook and takes thirty dollars. Mrs. Lee screams, and the thief, Cooper, who needs money to take out Mac's sister Marty, with whom he has a secret romance, escapes. When Helen sees Marty with Cooper, she cautions Marty, who alludes to the fact that Helen has not been without male companionship the nights that Mac has been away studying. After Helen backs up Marty's lie to Mac, when he questions her about coming in late the previous night, Mac berates Helen for lying and leaves very upset to take his exam. Helen goes to Cooper's apartment to persuade him to keep his date with Mrs. Rainey, who loves him, but he refuses and says that he and Marty are engaged. Mrs. Lee sees her as she leaves his apartment. Mrs. Lee's husband, a kindly ex-judge, learns that his son Jeff is going to visit Helen and suggests that he ask Helen to spend the evening with them. Jeff, who has been spending evenings with Helen while Mac was studying, wants her to divorce Mac, but she refuses and says that now that she knows they are being talked about, it is impossible to continue their friendship. At the dance club where Marty works as a cashier, three mobsters, who lost $1,000 betting on a fight that Cooper threw, give him twenty-four hours to come up with the money. When Mac returns after taking his exam, he and Helen make plans to go away to the country; however, his suspicions are aroused when he finds a cigarette butt that Jeff left. The next day, Marty gets money from the club to deposit in a bank, and Cooper purposely makes her wait with him to get bootlegged liquor so that she will miss the bank's closing and have to take the money home. At his apartment, he secretly takes the money from her purse, and when she discovers it gone, he won't let her look in his wallet. Helen, who sees them struggle, gets a gun, and as Cooper hits Marty, Helen fires and kills him. She and Marty, who retrieves her money, return to their apartment before the curious neighbors fill the hallway. After the body is found, Mac is assigned to the case, and he finds, in Cooper's room, a hair and fingerprints on a glass. He suspects Mrs. Rainey, who disappeared after the shooting because she did not want to face the shame of her relationship with Cooper being revealed; however, the hair and fingerprints do not match hers. After Mac overhears Mrs. Lee tell her husband that he saw Helen leave Cooper's apartment the previous night, Mac surreptitiously swipes a hair from the back of Helen's dress and takes the gun which she wiped clean of fingerprints to headquarters. He learns that the gun was fired within the past twenty-four hours and that Helen's hair is identical to that found in Cooper's apartment. Helen confides in Judge Lee, and he agrees to help her. Although Mac learns that he passed the bar exam, he is no longer interested. As Judge Lee and Marty listen from another room, he forcefully questions his wife about the shooting, suspecting that she shot Cooper after he tried to get money from her. The judge then gets an idea for a plan. He has the janitor show him Cooper's apartment, and after hiding a note, which he has had Marty write, under a couch, he arranges for the janitor to find it. Meanwhile, Mac discovers that Helen's fingerprints do not match those found in Cooper's apartment. The janitor then shows him the note, a confession from Mrs. Rainey. Mac is still suspicious and is about to arrest Helen, when a phone call from the Bureau of Missing Persons relates that Mrs. Rainey's body has been found in the harbor. Mac now asks Helen if she would join him on their planned vacation, and she kisses him and says she would go to the end of the world with him.